the tales and trials of a twenty-something

Tag Archives: waitressing

A couple of months ago my restaurant was hired to cater an off-site event. I was “asked” by my manager to work as a cater waiter at the event. She said, “Okay, it’s going to be you, Ronnie, Jasmine, and Myya working the event for Details Magazine.” That’s one classy sounding group of girls if you ask me. She said, “wear black v-necks and dark jeans that are you know…” – she then did an hour-glass motion with her hands. Containing my superfluous armory of snark, I flared my nostrils, pursed my lips, gave a long blink, and nodded my head.

One week later, and the event arrived. We walked from Rockefeller Center to a nearby clothing store. Between the four of us, two had to be “bartenders” and two had to be the servers. On par with my dearth of luck, I was the server. As I was walking through the crowd of people with my tray of jalapeño poppers, I saw a guy I went to high school with. At the moment, all I could remember about him was that he went to college at my safety school (along with 15% of my graduating class) and he once got a ticket for public urination. He’s not the first person I’ve run into while wearing my waitress costume, but seeing him triggered a brief rumination and infuriation that can be summed up in, “How the fuck do you have a real person job? This is bullshit.” Despite my efforts to avoid him, he approached me and astutely inquired, “What are you doing here?” Containing my superfluous armory of snark, I flared my nostrils, pursed my lips, gave a long blink, and gave a polite response.

While I cannot give insight as to why he has a job and I do not, I can provide the moral of this story. That is, that dumber people will inevitably be successful before I am, and I will learn to deal with it as it happens – probably by deactivating my Facebook account. On the upside, it makes for a good story.

On the next episode of “I Do Nothing at My Internship”: Danielle recounts her co-servers story about his time working at Bubba Gump Shrimp.